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Strengths, Supports, and Culture

Module 6: Functional Assessment and Readiness · Lesson 3 of 3

11 min Back to module

Story opener

Thursday, 4:40 p.m. A participant is sitting across from you, your supervisor wants three notes before you leave, and the answer you need is not in any binder on the shelf. This lesson is the part of the job nobody handed you in orientation.

Learning objectives

  • Be able to support arrangement can substitute for or accelerate skill teaching
  • Be able to define success in the participant's cultural terms

Lesson

The environment carries as much weight as the skill.

Catalog what already works: a reliable cousin, a church community, a manager who has been flexible, a phone with alarms. Supports reduce the skill burden and often produce faster wins than teaching alone.

Cultural context shapes what counts as success. A goal of 'independent living' may mean a separate apartment for one participant and a private room in a multigenerational household for another. Write the goal the participant would recognize as theirs.

Maryland guidance & authority labels

Every statement below is labeled so you know what is binding regulation, what is only proposed, what is professional guidance, and what is our house standard.

  • PRA guidance

    Functional assessment covers current skills, readiness, environment demands, and existing supports — not symptoms alone.

  • Internal best practice

    Assess in the environment where the skill must actually be used whenever it is safe and practical.

Common mistakes

  • Describing what you did without describing what the participant did.

    Do this instead — Record the intervention and the participant's observable response to it.

  • Treating regulation as a filing chore separate from practice.

    Do this instead — Let the required elements shape the session itself, so documentation writes itself.

Practical examples

Practical example

Instead of 'met with participant to discuss goals,' write: 'Reviewed the transportation objective; participant identified the #22 route unassisted and named one back-up plan. Verbal prompt needed once. Next session: practice the transfer at Mondawmin.'

Key takeaways

  • Support arrangement can substitute for or accelerate skill teaching
  • Define success in the participant's cultural terms

Reflection prompts

  1. 1Which part of this lesson describes something you are already doing differently in practice?
  2. 2What would an auditor see in your last five notes that contradicts this standard?

Bring your answers to supervision — the case-study workspace in this module saves written notes to your account.

Knowledge check

4 questions drawn from a bank of 7 · 75% to pass · instant feedback on every answer

1. How should you treat this statement? "Functional assessment covers current skills, readiness, environment demands, and existing supports — not symptoms alone."

2. Which statement is a key takeaway from "Strengths, Supports, and Culture"?

3. Which additional point does "Strengths, Supports, and Culture" emphasize?

4. A colleague does this: Describing what you did without describing what the participant did. What should they do instead?

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